Coooooooooooeeeeeee

So its taken a little while for the Cooee Crusaders to regather their wits and tell us poor sods at stately Brisbane Ultimate Blog mansion about their trip to Yeppoon on the long weekend (and a bit of time for us to get it up here on ye blog).

Here's the report from that connoisseur of road trips, frisbee fun and partying, Mr John McNaughton (plus random interspersed photos from Bruce):

Ladies and gents,

Deep in the annals of history (2004-2006), there was a tournament called the Gladstone Crusade.

It was held on the Queen's Birthday long weekend, and saw crusaders coming from all across the state to play. It won Tournament of the Year in 2005, and was nominated again the next year.

Sadly, this trilogy came to an end when people moved away. However, in the spirit of great trilogies, it could not be kept down.

Rising from the ashes of the Gladstone Crusade came the 2009 Cooee Crusade, held in Cooee Bay, Yeppoon (outside Rockhampton). This tournament was pulled together by the ridiculously overachieving Sara Cargill, who is on medical placement in Rockhampton for the year, and decided she wanted a tournament. A small contingent of Brisbanites, and an even smaller contingent of Townsvillains made the 8 hour crusade last weekend. Legislation has multiplied from the days of the crusaders, however - 3 separate cars from Brisbane were all punished for their zealous speed on the way up. A rough start for those drivers, but it couldn't put a damper on the weekend. In addition to the ring-ins, Sara had also roped in a dozen or so complete newbies from the hospital to join in the tournament - a mighty effort.

On arrival at the fields, players were split into their hat team, and given a white shirt and a can of spray paint in their team's colours. A great innovation for some individuality, although it made the red v pink games somewhat challenging to figure out...

We were soon into games, which were a challenge on a warm, humid afternoon. Special congratulations to all the rookies doing this for the first time. At the end of Saturday, every team had a 1-1 win-loss record, setting things up for an exciting Sunday. A City-Country game was then organised, keeping in the spirit of the Gladstone Crusade, but with the low player numbers this game was quite short-lived. The City team proved considerably stronger, and this game ended quickly.



On the sidelines, a Thai take-away dinner had just turned up, exciting a number of hungry stomachs. The night was spent in the group accommodation, a lodge only a hammer's throw from the fields. Silly games were played, beer was drunk, and people rejoiced. Special mention to Abbey, the Flipcup Queen, who almost single-handedly salvaged a game of survivor flip-cup after her team's poor performance. Solid.

The next day brought breakfast at the fields (yep, Sara IS amazing - toast, cereal, coffee, fruit, juice - the whole deal) and the last round-robin game, setting things up for the semi finals. A number of players had skipped for day 2, leaving some teams with one or no subs. The weather was a little kinder, though legs were wearier.



In the semis, The Naturals (red) were pitted against Pink (Bits), who had beaten them the previous day with some great performances from newer players (Brendan and Lauren in particular). Red decided to pick things up this time around, not allowing those gun receivers to go to the endzone, and combined with Pink's lack of subs and loss of Molly Young (ankle), The Naturals took a comfortable win. Green Monkeys (green) and the Blue Swimmer Crabs faced off on the other field, in the second battle of similar shirt colours. I didn't see it - I was playing the other one - but I'm sure it was a cracker. Notable mention goes to Mike Nolan's hammer fake on Alistair... In the end, Green took it out.

We had a lunch break before the final, which was taken at local Wreck Point lookout. Unbelievable. A beautiful spot, looking over Cooee Bay at Great Keppel and North Keppel islands, sun streaming down... A pretty amazing place to have your tourney lunch. Oh, and another point... free, unlimited zooper doopers throughout the tourney. Yeah, that's right.


After lunch, we headed down to the beach for some sand and surf action, relaxing before the biggest game of some of these young players' short careers. For the final, The Naturals lost Luke George, their local boy and 2004 Australian Junior representative, who went to watch some stupid sport involving a ball... This left Red with 4 boys and 3 girls, playing savage against a green team that had mauled them fairly comprehensively the day before. I won't try to give point for point... too hard... but general memories of the game:-

- A great layout in the back corner of the endzone by Melissa Spalding saw the first Red goal. Melissa also spent the whole game covering boys, as the tourney split was 5-2, and had a cracking performance, including another layout bid.


- Red started off strongly against Green's man defence, cutting it open to a 7-2? lead. Great play from tournament MVP Silent George Salisbury, proving unmarkable all game, and a strong performance from our rookie players Leah and Sam (who are clearly pressure players, having their best games of the tournament in the final).

- Green switched to a pommie defence and brought the game right back, tying things at 7s? or 8s? Somewhere around there... but lots of points for them, and not much at all for Red. Good running from Keith Cameron-Smith up front.

- James, tournament MVP Rookie, nailed a cross-field hammer to score Green's second goal, I think?

To wrap up, a great comeback from Green saw the game reach 9-all, double game point. The red team received, and after walking it most of the way down the field, turned it over at the endzone line. However, Green turned it over early, giving Red a short field to work with. No mistakes this time, and Sam (our rookie bloke) got open in the front corner for the winning score. So happiness abounded for Red, and Green were great as well, and it was happy. Annie Turner won female MVP Rookie, Lu Fearnside won female MVP.

Tourney winners were Red (John, Luke, George, Shaun, Sam, Carl, Colin, Leah, Melissa, Kirstin)... most awesome TD was Sara. Spirit was originally given to the Pink team.

However, our TD had forgotten the traditional method of deciding Spirit at the Crusade, which was later won by the Red team (see party below) :-) So I'm claiming tourney + Spirit win for Red...



The party that night was held at the George's place. Luke George, as mentioned, is a Yeppoon local. His father Jim spent the whole tournament taking some sweet photos (on ya Jim), and then Jim and wife Helen opened up their awesome house to us for a party. A top family, huge thanks to them!

Now, the traditional method for determining Spirit at the Crusade is a knockout tournament of disc sculling. Fill two discs with beer, get one team on each, winner progresses to the next round. The first round saw Green triumph over Pink, and Red take a close one over Blue. Blue destroyed Pink in the bronze medal drink-off. In a finals rematch, Red took on Green for the title. After a controversial finish to the first attempt, which was clearly won by Red, the biased judge (did I mention Sara was on Green?) called for a do-over... So, proving their tournament dominance, the Red team emptied their disc and celebrated a great team performance. Yeah team (this reminds me of the way Phil Gould talks about NSW in State of O...).

Other party highlights:
- Jim's photo slideshow keeping a room full of frisbee players away from beer for a solid 20 minutes;
- epic game of 12-a-side stubby guts in the garden, going for well over an hour;
- marshmallows and fire
- Jim and Helen cooking pancakes for everyone!!!!!

Around 1am, we cleared out and gave those good people some sleep. That didn't stop the committed partyers, however (though those trying to sleep probably wished that it had), who kept it going until 3:30 back at the lodge, with some fantastic entertainment provided. We'd like to thank Jaegermeister for its contribution to the show that night...

Monday was the long, slow trek back home, for those who drove. A chance to regather our thoughts, to ruminate on the fun that'd been had, and to plan our trip back next year.

HUGE props to (QUDA Volunteer of the Month) Sara for putting all this together. Awesome. To everyone who didn't make it... you can rest assured we had plenty of fun in your stead. I'd put it on the calendar for next year now...

John

There are some more entertaining pics at:

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/SaraCC/COOEE_CRUSADE_09#

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/SaraCC/CooeeCrusade

http://picasaweb.google.com/hughosborn/CooeeCrusade?authkey=Gv1sRgCKzJuLGTtKTuGA&feat=directlink#